Ze Tian Ji Chapter 727-728

Chapter 727 – Redemption, and a New Legend

Translated by: Hypersheep325

Edited by: Michyrr

(TN: Way of Choices will be on break from December 25th, 2017 – January 7, 2018)

The stone wall was carved with portraits of Qin Zhong and Yu Gong, two Divine Generals of the previous generation. Their painted hands held two chains that were tied around the girl’s feet. This was the array that Wang Zhice had laid down all those many years ago. In the ensuing centuries, no one, the little Black Dragon included, had the strength to pull these two chains from the wall. Even through using the Canon of Flowing West and his own blood, Chen Changsheng was only able to hope that this feat would be possible after two years. Logically speaking, a stone wall imbued with such a powerful array was inevitably cut off from any external organisms and no plants should have been able to grow on its surface, but now there was a Green Leaf growing from it.

There were only three leaves on this Green Leaf, and it had originally been fat and tender. Now, however, it looked rather thin and weak, as if it had lost a great deal of energy.

Perhaps it was because this Green Leaf was spreading too many roots?

Countless roots so thin that they were difficult to pick out with the naked eye were growing out of the bottom of the Green Leaf and spreading across the portraits on the stone wall. Some of the roots had found the smallest of cracks and burrowed into the wall. Upon probing inside, they would begin to almost frenziedly grow under the light of the rainbow.

The rainbow from the Li Palace and the Green Leaf were currently attempting to the break this array.

The little Black Dragon had no idea what was going on, why this was taking place, so she was very perplexed and nervous. Her small face was pale, the cinnabar birthmark between her eyebrows all the more striking.

……

……

What bathed the world was not starlight, but the rainbow.

When all the colors of a rainbow gathered in one place, it would be colorless. Noiseless and unbeknownst to all, it cast its light on New North Bridge, and it also shone upon the Frost Flower Market.

In the Frost Flower Market was a seemingly unremarkable, but actually heavily guarded, garden called the Orange Garden, Mo Yu’s residence and her current prison for her house arrest.

The array within the Orange Garden was like thin snow under the blazing sun, silently melting away under the light of this colorless, invisible rainbow. No one was alarmed, neither people nor the frogs hibernating within the snow.

Several small lanterns made from orange peels hung over the window. They were very cute, and the light penetrating through them was red and seemed warmer than usual.

Mo Yu kneeled on a prayer mat, facing in the direction of the Li Palace. Her eyes were closed, her long lashes slightly fluttering. She felt an incredible warmth.

This was the Pope’s final redemption to her. Perhaps it was related to the arrangements she had made back then to bring Chen Changsheng into the Orthodox Academy or perhaps it wasn’t, but it was a redemption nonetheless.

The rainbow vanished, and the precious treasures of the Orthodoxy within the Grass Moon Hall and the other five halls gradually grew calm.

The frigid air over New North Bridge grew even colder. Even that black hole in the ground had been ruptured apart by the cold.

The orange trees of Frost Flower Market were decorated with a new layer of frost, a beautiful sight rare to see. The lanterns in front of the window were still warm, but there was no one atop the prayer mat.

……

……

The Pope’s funeral was very quickly conducted. All the preparations had long been in place.

The diplomatic missions from White Emperor City and the south had remained after the celebrations because they had all mentally prepared themselves for this.

It was precisely because everything was already prepared that the people of the world felt anguish, but not shock. Nor did too many people feel fear or unease.

From autumn to winter, the Great Zhou had lost two Saints, and the Storms of the Eight Directions had suffered even greater losses. If one also added Su Li and the Holy Maiden of the south, who had departed beforehand, in the short span of a few years, the number of peak cultivators humanity possessed had undergone a steep decline. However, in the view of the common people, the demons had suffered even greater losses through their civil war and so they would not have courage to bring their armies south.

Some people did not think this way, such as the Pope who had already returned to the sea of stars. Besides him, those who knew the truth of the matter also began to feel more and more nervous as time passed.

The Li Palace had already made an announcement, so the entire world knew that Chen Changsheng was the new Pope of the Orthodoxy, even if he had not yet formally ascended to the throne.

The shocking and confusing fact was that no one had seen him during the Pope’s funeral.

This was almost unimaginable, but both the Li Palace and the Imperial Court remained silent on the issue as if there was a tacit agreement between the two sides. And what was this tacit agreement? Was it that agreement made after the long conversation the Pope and Shang Xingzhou had, on the night when Wang Po and Chen Changsheng killed Zhou Tong? Or were both sides waiting for a certain moment to come?

As the new year approached, another yellow page would be ripped off the calendar, and the winter sun would rise over the horizon once more. Many things would change.

On New Year’s Day, the Great Zhou Dynasty would formally change eras and the young emperor’s status would become unshakable. On the same day, the Li Palace would conduct a succession ceremony and the Orthodoxy would welcome a new master.

The young Emperor and young Pope were martial brothers.

Nothing of the kind had ever happened before.

This also meant that the current Emperor and Pope were both Shang Xingzhou’s students.

This was also something that had never happened before.

From every angle conceivable, this was the greatest peak to which one could ascend in life, and was perhaps even unimaginable before all this had occurred.

He had led the entire world in overthrowing the rule of the Tianhai Divine Empress, predicted and even perhaps taken part in the destruction of the Demon Lord, subdued the Pavilion of Heavenly Secrets with the wave of a hand, and now the two disciples that he had personally raised were about to become the two most important people of the mortal and religious spheres. Even if Shang Xingzhou was not a god, he had already become a legend.

Somewhat regretfully, nothing in this world was truly perfect. Fate, which reigned above the starry sky, would not allow such a thing to occur.

That problem still needed addressing, no matter how incomprehensible people found it that Chen Changsheng would be so confrontational with his own teacher. It still needed addressing, no matter how perplexed people were at why Shang Xingzhou so disliked, even loathed this disciple that he should have trusted…in short, this problem had to be addressed.

This was no longer merely a problem between teacher and disciple. It now concerned the fate of all of humanity, perhaps the world.

Just what would happen on New Year’s Day? The first civil war in the Great Zhou Dynasty’s history?

Snowstorms continued to rage. The Grass Moon Hall, the Pure Cassia Palace, and the Moss Institute were all dyed white. A lonely trail of footprints could be seen on the snow.

The streets outside the Li Palace were completely deserted. An invisible energy was constantly rippling between those famous stone pillars.

Whether it was the priests or ministers of the various halls, the students and teachers of the Ivy Academies, or the more than twenty thousand Orthodoxy cavalry, not a single person came out.

The various barracks of the Imperial Court within the capital were at the highest state of alert. Several Divine Generals were leading the world-famous black-armored heavy cavalry back south from the snowy plains of the north and were currently garrisoned at Black Mountain Valley. Based on the time needed for this journey, this terrifying flood of armored cavalry had left the Northern Army twenty days ago, when the Pope had still been alive.

The atmosphere in the capital was abnormally tense.

……

……

On New Year’s Eve, snow was still falling, and it could even be called a raging snowstorm.

The capital had suffered a particularly harsh winter this year. Nobody knew that this was for the most part due to the abandoned well near the Imperial City.

The afterglow of the setting sun barely managed to peek through the clouds and snow, shedding an extremely faint twilight against the walls of the palace.

Suddenly, an unimaginably cold Qi flooded out of the abandoned well. Both dried leaves and mud were instantly frozen rock-hard. Even the ice and snow, through some other, more incomprehensible method, were frozen again. Even the twilight seemed to be frozen.

A sound that had originally been very crisp came up from the depths of the well to the surface. It was already faint, even weaker than the sobbing sound that followed it.

A girl was crying.

She was crying nonstop, but the emotions expressed by this sobbing changed every moment. Sometimes it was incredibly happy and excited, other times particularly dismal and sad.

The soldiers of the Imperial City and the commoners in their houses all heard the sobbing of this young girl, but they did not know where it came from; they looked all over but could not find the source. They found it even more puzzling that a little girl was outside on such a frigid day and was still alive, and was even constantly crying. She cried from dusk until the late night, never once stopping for a break.

From that day on, in New North Bridge, a new legend appeared alongside the legend of the evil dragon.

The main character of this legend was a child daughter-in-law killed by her heartless mother-in-law.

Chapter 728 – The Conversation in the Snowy Night

Translated by: Hypersheep325

Edited by: Michyrr

(TN: Way of Choices will be on break from December 25th, 2017 – January 7, 2018)

In the late night, the cold was even more severe. The layers of ice and snow surrounding the abandoned well were as hard as stone.

A small hand appeared along the brim of the well, white and clean under the lanterns shining from the Imperial City. Not even all the snow in the sky could be as white or as cold as this hand.

The small hand exerted itself, snow rustled and crumbled, and a girl climbed out of the well. This sight was truly very similar to a certain horror story.

The girl stood in the snow. As her breath met the air, it transformed into an enveloping fog of crystals. It wasn’t because her breath was hot, but because it was too cold.

She wore a black dress, somewhat shabby and very old. It posed a striking contrast to this world of white snow.

After several centuries, Zhizhi finally left that gloomy and, to her at least, particularly cramped underground world, stepping into the world of humans once more.

The current human world had long since forgotten that particularly ruthless Black Frost Dragon from many years ago, and she also found the human world incredibly strange.

Her spiritual soul had once been forcefully extracted from her dragon body by the Tianhai Divine Empress and inserted into the black jade ruyi so that she could accompany Chen Changsheng to the Garden of Zhou. In that period of time, she had seen the streets of the capital, the green trees by the lake, the hustle and bustle of Wenshui, and that valley under the twilight. However, all that lay before her eyes now was still so strange.

She was no longer a spiritual soul, but real and complete.

Her bare feet could clearly sense the looseness and warmth of the snow.

The ends of her hair could clearly sense the gentle and pleasing touch of the winter winds.

She could use her own eyes, not her consciousness, to see the real snow. She could even see the real starry sky behind the clouds of snow. Ah, the countless stars—even after hundreds of years, all of you are still in the same place, still shining with that same beautiful silver light. But will my hometown of the southern islands still have the same old appearance?

The sense of strangeness and sense of reality constantly tangled and clashed against each other in her mind, ultimately transforming into the most real sense of timidity.

She had no idea that, in the near future, she would become the newest legend of the human world, even though her existence as a noble and powerful dragon was a legend in itself to humanity. She was only afraid of this strange world.

This world was the world of humans, the human world that was brimming with humans, and humans were what she was the most afraid of.

Any being, noble or lowly, powerful or weak, at its weakest, most perplexed, and most frightened moment, would always search out its most familiar support. This support might a tree, a stone, perhaps a window, and it might even be a person.

Zhou Tong’s mind on the verge of death was dazzled, so it only knew to crawl towards the alley of the Northern Military Department.

At this time, her mind also held only one name: Chen Changsheng.

Chen Changsheng was the being in the world that she was the most familiar with and that she trusted the most. In addition, for a few reasons secret to her, she firmly believed that he had to take responsibility for her. Thus, after she came to her senses, she began heading without hesitation towards the nearby Orthodox Academy, her bare feet stamping out a clear trail in the snow.

……

……

The Orthodox Academy and the neighboring Hundred Herb Garden were both under heavy guard. The Orthodoxy cavalry and the troops of the Imperial Court had sealed off the entire block. Both sides silently stared at each other from their respective camps, the atmosphere extremely tense. Nobody knew what might happen next.

The situation in the capital was constantly changing. After the Pope returned to the sea of stars, it was still not possible to tell what the people yearned for, but assessments were slowly beginning to favor the Imperial Court. Teachers and students had left the Orthodox Academy in great numbers, leaving only one-third of the original number behind. The eighteen female disciples of South Stream Temple and Su Moyu had naturally remained, but all of them understood that it was impossible for them to influence what happened next in any way. The only two people that could truly decide the end of all this were currently under the great banyan tree by the lake.

No one in the capital could sleep tonight, because many people knew that the master and disciple were conducting their final negotiation.

The snowstorms over the past few days had been rather fierce. The Orthodox Academy was just like all the other places in the capital, buried under a thick mantle of snow. The dead grass by the lake had been utterly drowned. Only in a few slightly depressed areas could one see a few tips of dead grass that seemed to exude an aura of obstinacy.

The great banyan tree had shed its leaves long ago, but its bare branches were still as firm as ever, sturdy enough for quite a few people to stand atop them.

Chen Changsheng was not standing on the tree, but on the snow-covered ground beneath it, as his teacher was also standing in the snow.

This was the first time this master and disciple had met after that morning in the Mausoleum of Books. On that day, they had passed each other on the Divine Path like strangers, gazing straight past each other. This time, their gazes truly met and so each of them could clearly tell how the other had changed since that period in Xining Village.

Chen Changsheng was already Pope, but he did not wear the Divine Robe, did not bear the Divine Crown, and did not grip the Divine Staff. Instead, he wore the uniform of the Orthodox Academy, his hair meticulously combed into the simplest of Daoist topknots. What ran through his black hair to fasten his topknot was not some precious ebony hairpin, but a normal wooden chopstick.

Shang Xingzhou had a full head of black hair with no hint of white which was similarly combed meticulously. His face carried a noble and composed aura, exuding an indescribable elegance and ease. However, his clothes were very simple: just a blue Daoist robe. He did not truly seem like the supreme individual of the present age, but a normal Daoist.

If someone were to see this sight, they would get the impression that from a certain perspective, this master and his disciple were very similar. This was not merely an external similarity, but it was also in that deep tinge of indifference on their faces and that sense of disaffection hidden behind their calm exteriors.

Chen Changsheng was prepared to open his mouth and speak, but he realized that he had no idea what to say.

It had already been several years since he last spoke with the man standing across from him. To cultivators, a few years was a very short amount of time, but he still felt it to be very long, so long that the memories related to Xining Village and that old temple had become somewhat hazy. At the very least, memories of certain things had already become difficult to clearly recall.

He could still clearly remember the mottled spots on the walls of the old temple after the Daoist scriptures were moved. He still clearly remembered that on the night before he left, his senior brother had cooked four vegetable dishes, each having a different taste and style, and that one of them had contained a lot of garlic. And yet he could not remember what his final words with his master were.

At this time, Shang Xingzhou spoke.

“I picked you out from the stream. Although I knew beforehand that you would be in the stream, without me, you would have drowned in the waters of the stream or been eaten by the old dragon. In short, I saved your life and raised you into an adult, so your life is mine.”

Tonight was the final night, and tomorrow would be a new day, a new day like so many countless new days before it, but the first day for the new continent. Tonight’s conversation in the snow would decide whether the people of the capital and the entire continent would be able to pass the morrow as they had for the past several years, peacefully and happily welcoming the rising sun of the new year.

No one could have imagined this conversation to have started so suddenly and advanced so unyieldingly that the prologue sounded just like the ending.